Ōpōtiki grower wins 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award
Brett Wotton, an Eastern Bay of Plenty kiwifruit grower and harvest contractor, has won the 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award for his work to support lifting fruit quality across the industry.
Italian kiwifruit packhouses' experience in dealing with COVID-19 has helped New Zealand to fast-track innovation in its own packhouses to deal with stringent new safety regulations.
Zespri’s chief grower and alliances officer, Dave Courtney, told Hort News that when the new rules around social distancing in workplaces came into force in NZ, there were challenges in putting the new practices in place – this slowed down packhouse efficiency for some time.
However, he says some of the packhouses in Italy – which pack Zespri kiwifruit – had been dealing with this issue much earlier, had experience in these types of protocols and knew how to keep people safely apart.
“They actually shared their ideas around erecting screens between people and how they ran their facilities and sent us photos and videos and other information,” Courtney explains.
“There was a real collaborative approach about how to meet the new rules and how to keep operating under them. So, we were quickly able to take their learnings and devise our own systems based in their ones.”
Courtney says Italy tends to harvest their green kiwifruit early and put it into coolstores. When they get orders, they bring it out and pack it then. He says the kiwifruit industry in NZ has now got its head around the new protocols and how to operate.
“Many have gained confidence in their operating environment and we are seeing really good pack-outs now. Some are even up to some of the best days of last year.”
But Courtney says this varies across the industry and there is no doubt the Covid protocols have had an impact on the how firms operate.
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Established in 2021, the John Deere Technician of the Year Awards champion the important contribution parts and service technicians make to the Australian and New Zealand agriculture, construction and forestry industries.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) is calling on farmers from all regions to take part in the final season of the Sheep Poo Study aiming to build a clearer picture of how facial eczema (FE) affects farms across New Zealand.
New Zealand is closer to eradicating bovine TB than ever before, but possums remain a threat, says Beef + Lamb New Zealand.
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has joined the debate around the proposed sale of Fonterra’s consumer and related businesses, demanding answers from the co-operative around its milk supply deal with the buyer, Lactalis.
The ACT Party says media reports that global dairy giant Nestle has withdrawn from the Dairy Methane Action Alliance shows why New Zealand needs to rethink its approach to climate.
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